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file() loads the entire contents of the specified file into an array, with each line of the file becoming one array element.

fopen() allows you to open a file for reading or writing, so that you can then use fread() or fwrite() to read/write specific portions of the file, for example. When you're done with the file, you should call fclose() to close it and make it available to other programs/PHP scripts again.

file() is very convenient for grabbing the whole file at once, but if you only need a couple of lines out of a very large file it can be very wasteful. file() also doesn't let you write the file.